[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by starseed

Personally, I am skeptical that any type of economic embargo will persuade them to change their form of government.

I'm the same way. I don't have too much to respond here that hasn't already been said, but I sent this to TangerZ a few months ago via PM since its incredibly hard to bring an alternative argument without responses like the above from jammies. (For what its worth, I thought TangerZ was understanding of the idea as well.)

I thought what you said was a good post and I agree, the people on both sides have to work together to resolve this issue. I think both sides (the chinese government and the Tibet separatist extremists) are both idiots, and there has to be a common resolution on both sides. I think both sides have a legitamate argument, and while I don't agree with violence (on either side, and you have to admit this isn't one side) my criticism before was that China isn't the only one.

<snip reason>, I know how China can be. I've heard lots of stories and personal incidents of China. I knew enough that most of <snip - people I know> fled Hong Kong in 1996, just before the handover cause of China's less then liberal laws. So trust me when I say this, I'm not China's biggest pom pom weaver myself and China isn't on my list of places I want to live. However, my only argument is that China isn't the only one guilty here. The USA did it with Cuba, Mexico and half of Latin America is pretty sketchy with these types of rules, Britain didn't let their colonies seperate easily either. This is a David-vs-Goliath every major country does over the little guy, be it political (Tibet), oil (Nigeria), stretegic (USA-Cambodia) and so on. But, closed minded <filtered word> here won't understand that, and think there's only one evil: The Commies, Russians and Chinese.

China definately has a long ways to go, no doubt. And as you said, they are progressively getting there. Tibet, obviously, is a issue that will get tackled at some point. My argument before was that people think of China like they are the commies during the Cold War, and thats just not true. Lots of stupid things in China, lots of stupid things here (read: Gitmo). Socially, the USA definately has a stronger infrustructure (not always common sense though! Some stupid laws here that get laughed at by the Chinese as they think we're morons as well, so we arn't perfect here as well. Its really annoying here when sheltered Westerners who don't know a damn thing about whats outside of Canada point their nose at everyone else and say they're doing it wrong.

There are alot of social issues and social structure that need to be developed for resolutions like this to succeed, and steps are getting there. In the past 10 years, China has without a doubt made huge huge gains in loosening up, opening their borders not just to people and business, but ideas as well. I hope China retains alot of its conservative values, but its gains we've seen in the past 10 years (largely without Westerners knowing) that are instrumental for China to be able to work up that social structure to resolve this issue with Tibet. <snip - bad word> foreigners like the dumb Canadians on the Great Wall only push China backwards from developing and opening up to new ideas; when China opens its doors to the world after thousands of years and welcomes new people and ideas, and these ideas start to rearrange their home and litter their house, they're going to tighten those ideas that were freely coming in before. Its the people on the bandwagon who decide to pile on that are pushing this issue deeper and deeper, not making it better, and quite frankly, I think they're completely stupid for doing that. (This is coming from someone who understands how the Chinese think and how they react to these things)

Anyways, I just wanted to reiterate that I'm saying China is at no fault, and I repeat, China and Tibet at some time have to come together to work on a resolution that works for both sides. For that to happen, that will happen within the boarders and it will take alot of time; not for people who have no idea wtf is going on to try and embarrass them and demand change.

Just my thoughts, hope you view this with an open mind.